Rules may change under Nats' net policy

Wireless maybe the future, but the current technology available is not strong/stable enough to give a nationwide network providing voice and data at high speeds.

Fibre is obviously a good choice, and in order to get fibre from the exchange all the way to the home, first step needs to be fibre from exchange to the cabinet, its impossible to suddenly change all home to cabinet lines into fibre.

Telecom or no telecom and politics aside, faster broadband needs to be a high priority in order to keep up with the rest of the world. Getting internet as fast as some other countries (ie Belgium) is not going to be an easy task and however should not give up in trying. But NZ should atleast try to keep up with Aus.

Another factor is demand, at the moment BB prices are too high for the majority of the country to demand for faster BB, and telco's can't subsidise prices because they can't predict the demand for it. The only way to end this cycle is for the government to intervene and subsidise the prices so more people get used to faster internet, then the demand for even fast BB would increase giving telco's the opportunity to develop their networks further and reducing consumer prices.

Not a year, 3 year or a 6 year plan, This issue should be a very long term plan. IT is growing faster than people can imagine, so the infustructure needs to be keeping up with it. In order to do this, NZ should not rely on what government is in power. A third party (government owned or not) needs to constantly strive to improve infustructure. Worrying about who has the monopoly and blaming everying on successful companies are not going to make any difference to the future development of the country. Monopoly or not if someone gets the job done and provide services at a reasonable price to the consumer it should be fine.

Fiber is the future and Lite Access's technology deploys for less than half the cost of traditional networks. Lite Access Technologies (LAT) is an International manufacturer and distributor of a revolutionary new fiber optic access technology. This patented fiber optic solution uses a microduct, low impact technology to bridge the billion dollar ???Last Mile??? connectivity divide. With this technology, there is the capability of adding fiber providing the end user with virtually unlimited network connectivity now and for the future.

Lite Access Technologies has many successes world wide including departments in the United States Government, North American Cable & Telco's, Homeland Security and the cities of London, England and Washington, D.C. The cost and time to deploy fiber optic networks is reduced by 40% on average.

Some of the benefits of the LAT's Access solution over other low impact technologies include:

* Air & Water tight * Add fiber at any time * No splice on midpoint access chambers * Repair compromised sections by connecting the ducts and blowing new fiber, no splice no attenuation * RUS, Military and connecting cameras for Homeland security in Washington, D.C * Numerous warehouses, International training and manufacturing, ISO9001 and support.

www.liteaccess.com

If this is a ploy to get votes, it sure is hilarious. In the article it states 'In the first six years, priority would be given to businesses, schools, hospitals and clinics.' What about the priority of customers?

Surely customers have been the main vocal point of terrible broadband, now how about satisfying their needs and wants with ultra high speed internet and unlimited data transfer.

As long as National's focus point for this policy is businesses and the time frame for customers' broadband to be upgraded is six years, may the Broadband god help us.

I think fibre to the homes would be fantastic. If our telephone lines are as old as has been suggested, then they'll need to be replaced at some point anyway, and we might as well replace them with Fibre.

That would be a good way to get a leg-up on some other countries. New Zealand's small enough that I think it could work. That has to be qualified, though, by saying that it won't reach everyone. Mostly farmers, and people in small, out-of-the-way communities. For those people, I guess Wireless, or ADSL is about the best that can be done. Maybe, over the course of many years, Fibre could be slowly rolled out.

That would depend on a lot of things though...

But free national traffic would be wonderful! Absolutely fantastic, really. Hell, even counting it as 1/2 or 1/10th International Traffic would be a huge step up... Not that I use much, but even so.

The real question is how much would this fibre cost *us*, the people who would ultimately wind up paying a monthly fee for it? If it's too high, then there's no point in even thinking about it. It would just be the province of the rich, really. Maybe one day normal people could afford it? Yeah.

Still, it's nice to dream.

Wireless broadband will have a major role to play, but it will never displace fixed line broadband, since wireless transmission has inherently higher latency than traditional cables. If anything, wireless will merely fill gaps, particularly for remote regions etc where planting cables would be unviable.

Also, equal attention needs to be paid to the internet backbone and the underwater cables that link us to the rest of the world. In that regard, Kordia's plans are a plus.

Governments need to stay out of Telecommunications. They're just not competent to enter that space. There's fiasco in every country where they try, most recently in Australia.

Beware also commentators from the IT Industry, and the "anyone-but-Telecom" brigade. Also watch for the voodoo-economists showing incredible return on investment from fibre-to-the-home deployment.

I'm afraid Keys just lost my vote. I don't want my Tax moneys wasted on any broadband investment.

It's all very well to keep upgrading the wires, but when it's the exchanges that are providing most of the traffic jams what's the point? In Chch, internet is critically bad in some suburbs due to outdated, overloaded exchanges that were never designed with broadband in mind. Regardless of whether the wires can take 2 or 50Mb/s we'll still get our slow, disconnection-ridden internet at peak hours until the exchanges are upgraded to cope with high public demand.

As someone who puts up with an astonishingly bad phone line which obviously unbundling isn't going to fix - this is a godsend. Replacing the copper with fibre = REAL speed increases. National is almost certain to get my vote.....

In retrospect, Telecom, at it's formation in 1990, should never have been allowed the network infrastructure. At that time NZ had the best of the world's communications technology. Telecom management ignored this and proceeded to milk their customers for all they could, without investing in new technology (apart from mobile networks). NZ was the first country to install optic fibre into the CBD networks but then along came ADSL. This was originally designed as an INTERIM measure to allow broadband access over copper lines, prior to the telco's installing optic fibre to all customers. Unfortunately, Telecom (and others overseas) got greedy and failed to live up to expectations of their customers, fobbing them of with a barely adequate broadband network. It will take more than a promise from a wannabe politician to force Telecoms hand. While the injection of Government money is a start, (interesting to see that the $1.5 billion is about the amount Telecom lost on it's ill fated venture into Australia)it will take more investment from businesses to see a true broadband network. Whatever happens politically, please do not give the new network to Telecom to screw up!

Sounds like a good deal for business, but actually cannot find anywhere where he, Mr. Key has a similar offer for the ordinary and low income folk.